His to Claim

by Taylor Vaughn

  “A Kel who does not need protection from such a puny race.”

  T’Kan opens his mouth, but before he can issue another protest, I point out, “You are our planet’s strongest warrior and my General. You could have easily requested before this moment to participate in the Breeding Ceremony next solar. You will tell me why you did not.”

  T’Kan shifts uncomfortably. “My uncle is demanding a male heir. N’Thn’s participation in the Breeding Ceremony produced a girl child two solars ago. There had been plans for him to come again this solar …”

  T’Kan trails off, but he does not have to finish. Even though the Kaidorians ended the Three Generations War a few moons ago with a request for peace negotiations, the repercussions from that extended conflict still resonate. Especially for T’Kan, whose cousin, N’Thn, the male he’d been raised beside same as a brother, was killed in the Last Great Battle.

  “My uncle blames me for N’Thn’s death, and he is not wrong. I should have protected him,” T’Kan tells me, his ridges tight with self-condemnation. “I owe this to the uncle, who took me in when my parents’ spirits passed to the next realm. I must continue our bloodline ...”

  I furrow my ridges. T’Kan’s uncle, N’Ure served my father and now me as prime minister. He’s a trusted advisor but, in my opinion, has too often used his adoption of T’Kan as a chip to manipulate my friend into doing his bidding.

  “You will be in a more stable frame of mind next solar. If you wish to back out of today’s ceremony, I will speak with your uncle on your behalf. Command the extension if necessary.”

  T’Kan stiffens. “I will be fine, my Kel, and I have no wish to further delay the Breeding Ceremony.”

  His words had become formal again. Any other day I might have pursued it. Insisted T’Kan let me handle his over demanding uncle.

  But today was not any other day.

  At the mention of the Breeding Ceremony, all of my thoughts snap back to her.

  Finally it is time.

  I arrive at the long hallway that leads directly to the ship’s hatch door with T’Kan at my flank. As promised, this solar’s crop of Breeding Ceremony participants are lined up on either side of me.

  On one side stands warriors who served bravely in the Three Generation War and now wish to settle down with a Xalthurian female and a hybrid son to call their own. On the other side stands rich scions whose fathers have donated great sums to our royal treasury to gain their sons the opportunity to continue their family lines.

  All males, rich and warrior, are dressed in a simple ceremonial cloth, clearly delineating them from the soldiers in uniform who will be extracting our newborn males from this desolate planet. Their excitement is palatable. The hallway is noisy with talk of how they will finally be able to fuck to their diijo’s content this eve.

  However, all talk ceases when the Breeding Ceremony males become aware of my presence. Standing erect, they keep their gazes straight ahead, so as not to make accidental eye contact with me during my quick inspection of their ranks. Eye contact with a royal is considered disrespectful. A fact, my defiant little New Terrhan hu’man either had not known or did not care about—perhaps both.

  I have almost made it to the males standing nearest to the hatch doors when I hear the whisper behind me. “I plan to fuck the female who spat on our Kel until she passes out.” Several snickers greet the anonymous declaration.

  A possessive fury flares through me. My ridges lay flat. And I turn back around. “Whoever said they planned to claim the hu’man who affronted me will step forward and give me their name. Now.”

  When there comes no immediate response T’Kan who is still at my flank hisses, “Our Kel gave you a command!”

  Still no answer comes, and T’Kan’s expression darkens to savage.

  I place a hand on his shoulder, and remind him, “You are here as a Breeding Male, not as my General, T'Kaniteton. Stand down. I will take care of this.”

  T’Kan’s violet eyes blaze with fury, but eventually, he places his hand over his ridges and bows his head, backing down as his Kel commands.

  I calmly walk over to a group of three warriors who were there the day when the hu’man spat in my face. They are among my finest fighters, all in peak physical condition.

  Yet my gaze lands upon them like newets who have found their way onto my ship. “What I hate more than disrespect is a coward,” I tell them not bothering to raise my voice. They are all deeply aware, I am certain, of how serious this has become. “As your Kel, I command you to step forward and take responsibility for what you have said.”

  A deep orange warrior steps forward, his head bowed. “I meant no disrespect, my Kel.”

  “Look at me,” I command.

  The warrior hesitates, but eventually raises his gaze, his yellow diamond eyes meeting my angry stare.

  A beat. Then I slam my fist into his chest. The warrior flies back, landing in front of the door I emerged from a few moments ago.

  He lies there stunned, but his lesson is not yet complete. I stride over to his fallen body, grip him by his dark braid and lift him up just enough to rain blows into his face. When the man has the gall, to raise his hands to block his Kel’s fists, I hit him harder.

  An extreme lesson to be certain, but I need to impress upon him and everyone else witnessing this punishment that my wrath should not be taken lightly.

  No one will ruin this day for me, no warriors, no spoiled scions. No one. I have waited too long, spent too many sleepless nights thinking about how my claim of the hu’man would go.

  I do not stop hitting until the warrior falls unconscious, his bloodied face flopping back as his body collapses to the ground. Life remains within him. His slow labored breathing tells me that much. But he will not be breeding my hu’man this day. Or any other female for that matter.

  Good.

  My obsession might cease as soon as I spill inside of her, but as of now….

  I can feel the eyes of every male in the hallway upon me, taking in my lesson: Touch her and get beaten as close to death as you can come before I let up.

  I turn to the nearest male on the warrior side of the hallway. “Take him to the medic. And then you may rejoin the rest of the participants.”

  The warrior places a hand over his ridges and bows his head. “Yes, my Kel.”

  “It is time. Lower the hatch door!” I call out, as I stride back down the passageway.

  T’Kan need not have worried about my personal safety. As soon as I step off the ship, I am flanked by two guards, dressed in silver uniforms.

  Feh M’Rir, one of the two translators we’ve brought along, approaches with his head bowed. “My Kel. The females have been rounded up as you have commanded. Shall I sound the horn for the ceremony to commence?”

  This is another difference from past solars. Usually, the breeding males are unleashed on the village in what I have been told is an exhilarating hunt. However, that method can lead to unpleasant outcomes. I’ve also heard tales of hu’man females being taken in their homes. A few fragile females had even had a bone or two in their strangely brittle skeletons broken during their capture and transport back to the ship.

  I did not want to take such chances with my intended conquest, so this solar an advance force had been sent to gather all the breeding age females while the breeding males remained on ship.

  “I will inspect the females before the sounding of the horn,” I answer the translator.

  “As you wish. This way, if you please, my Kel.”

  I follow him to the edge of the New Terrhan village. Many hu’man males and females have gathered in a crowd in the place where we drop off are annual gift, probably ready to claim the offerings of this solar.

  I do not bother to greet them as I would a crowd on my home planet. It would be pointless. None of them understand our language, and my father had decreed it a waste of resources to provide them with translators after signing the accord, since our interactions would only be once a solar.r />
  However, I do take note of the female half-Xallings among the waiting crowd. These are the hybrid girls who have been left to be raised among the hu’mans. Like our boys, many of them have taken on Xalthurian traits, including height and build and ridged noses. Quite a few of the girls are willowy and some of the older ones stand taller than the hu’man males. The only detail that distinguishes many of them from actual Xalthurian females is the distinct swirl of their skin.

  I inwardly nod with satisfaction. They are a testament to the ceremony’s success, and if these girls prove to be as fertile as their human mothers, they will be much coveted once the oldest ones come of age in a couple of solars. They might even be taken on as wives, not only by the hybrid Xalthurian males, but also by the full ones. Perhaps our accord will need to be revisited.

  My father is, and will always be my Kel, and therefore every decision he made while alive was true and supreme. Yet, before his passing, my father confessed that he regretted not negotiating for Xalthurian females as well.

  “The hu’man leaders were already quite wary about letting us breed their young females,” he told me. “They imposed many conditions, and it was almost certain the accord would fall through if we insisted on keeping both the male and the female Xallings. While females are nice, only males can fight in the war. Besides, it is still uncertain if these hybrid females will be as fertile as their hu’man counterparts.”

  At the time, the Three Generation war was in its third age, and the hu’man solution was meant to be a temporary stop gap until our scientist found a cure for the infertility side effect of the Extinction Virus.

  However, the war was over now, and the scientists have still not figured out how to help our females conceive. The hybrids might very well be our best hope for future survival.

  Yet, as interesting as the half-Xalthurians are, I quickly avert my gaze from them to the group of hu’man females, who have been corralled into an empty pen for my inspection.

  I am a Kel with a mind toward my species’ future, but I only care about one thing in this moment.

  I stride into the pen, and make careful study of the New Terrhan females, who have been lined up along the fence walls. Most seem resigned to this process but a small few look back at me with tears in their eyes.

  It does not matter. They will all participate in the Breeding Ceremony by decree of the accord. Their skin tones range from pale to dark and everything in between. They do not possess the bright vibrant jeweled hues of my people, but they are fascinating despite that. Or perhaps because of that. It is hard not to stare at the humans with their matte skin tones, closer to colors found in nature than in our gem mines.

  Yet, none of these hu’man females have the dark brown skin I am looking for, have dreamed of these many solar nights. And my anger rises as I continue to inspect each eligible woman and realize…the one I seek is not among them.

  Feh M’Rir comes to my side the instant after I call out to him. “My Kel. What is the matter?”

  “I was told all the eligible females would be in attendance.”

  The ridges along M’Rir’s nose and forehead shoot up in surprise. “My Kel, I was told they had all been gathered.”

  Yet, they had not.

  A new rage pulses through my veins. But then I remember….

  I had not trusted myself to go along to last solar’s breeding mission, but I had ordered T’Kan to verify where my defiant hu’man resided.

  I do not have to return to the ship to find my General. To no one’s surprise, he decided to follow me and my assigned guards as opposed to staying behind with the rest of the Breeding Ceremony males.

  “Right this way, my Kel,” he says when I turn to him, as if reading my mind.

  We charge through the town of red mud houses until we reach the one where she lives.

  I raise my hand to bang on the red wood door, but then in the last moment, decide to rip the thing off its hinges.

  I cannot remember ever being so angry. Not even in the heat of battle with the Kaidorians.

  The house is almost laughably small. I have to duck to enter the dwelling, then bend forward so that my head does not strike the ceiling. I recognize the two humans, cowering inside the mud house’s single room. They are the ones who begged me for mercy after my chosen one spat at me. I assume they are her parents. They share several facial features and their skin tones are very close to hers, just not as supple.

  “You will tell me where she is!” I demand.

  They merely stare at me wide-eyed, and trembling. I hiss in frustration when I remember they cannot understand me. “M’Rir!”

  The translator instantly appears beside me. “Yes, my Kel?”

  “Ask them where their daughter is.”

  M’Rir turns to the shivering hu’mans and speaks to them in the throat box language of the New Terrhans.

  My chosen’s parents seem distressed as they answer his questions, shaking their heads in a way that tells me I will not like what is being said.

  “You will tell me what they are saying,” I command, cutting off the exchange.

  M’Rir ridges quaver. “My Kel. They say they have not seen their daughter since the last meal.”

  There is something in M’Rir’s tone that makes me think he is not telling me everything. “There is more.”

  M’Rir’s ridges quaver again as he flushes a deeper shade of green. “It is only…they believe she might have run away. After an apparent incident with her sister, she vowed to her parents that she would never participate in the ceremony. They believe she might have found a way to keep her promise.”

  It takes a moment for my mind to process what M’Rir is telling me.

  The audacity of this woman, she obviously believed that my sparing her life meant that she should not be punished for her actions.

  This is a belief I will quickly disabuse her of. The leaders not only gave us breeding rights in exchange for food and supplies, but also our protection. The language in the accord is clear. New Terrhan is our territory to supply and protect, which makes me their Kel. If this hu’man thinks for a moment that she will get away with this, any of this, it is time for her to learn otherwise.

  I will find her. And after I am finished with her, there will be no doubt in her mind that I am her Kel, her overlord, the one to whom she belongs.

  I glare at the still shivering hu’mans and speak, knowing that M’Rir will translate for me. “If you have helped her, if you have helped her defy me in any way, I will snap your necks. Now, get me an item of her clothing.”

  “My Kel, what is the plan?” T’Kan asks when I storm out of the hut with a piece of clothing the hu’man mother passed onto me with shaking hands.

  “It seems I was mistaken,” I tell him, holding the rough red cloth up to my nose. “There will be a hunt after all.”

  It has been quite a few moons since I’ve been on a proper hunt. As Kel, my days are filled with official Xalthurian business. But how long it has been matters not, I know, when I immediately pick up her scent on the opposite edge of the settlement. My blood races with excitement as I look toward the forest in the distance and see two figures racing toward the tree line.

  There she is …

  Trying to escape.

  Trying to hide.

  I drop the item of clothing, no longer needing it.

  Yes, I am going hunting and she will be my prey.

  3

  Kira

  I pray as I run with Zinnia beside me. To the moons. To the stars. To any of the gods from the old planet who might be listening.

  Maybe it worked.

  Even with me having to half drag Zinnia, we get all the way to the tree line without hearing any shouts or sounds of Silver Uniform soldiers’ in pursuit.

  “We made it!” I gasp, choking on the air deficit in my lungs after running so far for so long. “Now all we have to do is get to our hiding holes and cover up, so that they don’t catch our scent.”

  I smile reassur
ingly at her.

  But Zinnia…she doesn’t smile back. Just stares into the distance, her head turned toward the town.

  My heart drops as I look in the same direction. But it’s useless. Everything beyond a few yards is a total blur.

  My damn eyes…

  I have a condition my mother says used to be referred to as near-sightedness before something called laser eye surgery became the protocol upon birth on the old planet and sometimes even in vitro.

  Unfortunately, my parents had received their colony ship lottery ticket when I was still in my mother’s womb. According to them, medical service on the ship had been so overburdened before the voyage’s takeoff, I’m lucky my mother was able to secure a special stasis pod for expectant mothers. Correcting my eyesight invitro wasn’t even an option.

  Usually I just deal with not being able to see over long distances. Squint a lot and ask people to come closer if they’re too far away. But now I curse my poor eyesight as I ask Zinnia, “What is it? What do you see?”

  “Two Xalthurians in loincloths,” she answers, her voice squeaking with fright. “They’re coming this way…and moons, they’re moving fast!”

  Yeah, I remember their speed well. How they’d instantly surrounded Elle, herding her toward the cliff, so that she had nowhere else to run…

  A cold wave of fear washes over me, even as my gut hardens with a new plan.

  “What are we going to do, Kira?” Zinnia asks me.

  I can’t…I can’t let them get Zinnia like they got Elle.

  I regard my dear friend sadly, knowing she won’t like what I’m going to say next. “You’re going to keep running. It’s a straight shot to the holes on the east side of the forest. Just make sure to cover up with all the mud and leaves we set out, so that they can’t find you. You can make it, if…”

  I open my fanny pack and bring out the rough knife I made in the weeks after Elle went over the cliff. The kind we humans are forbidden to have since us remaining weaponless was part of the New Terrhan accord. “…if I distract them.”